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A Concorde Is Disfigured While Parked in Brooklyn

An accident last week sheared off the nose cone of the Concorde at Floyd Bennett Field.Credit
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

The supersonic passenger jet known as Alpha Delta retired unscathed in 2003 after nearly 30 years of speeding back and forth over the Atlantic Ocean. But in less than two years in Brooklyn, it already has had its pointy nose knocked off.

In a multicultural crash in the middle of the night, the jet, a Concorde that is owned by a British airline, was hit by a truck that was hauling equipment from a Jamaican music and soccer festival. The truck clipped the distinctive nose cone off the parked Anglo-French jet about 3 a.m. last Monday, prompting an impassioned uproar among the jet’s band of enthusiasts.

To many admirers, the tapered nose, which could be lowered up to 12.5 degrees to clear the pilots’ field of vision during the jet’s steeply angled takeoffs and landings, was what made the Concorde the Concorde. Within 20 hours of the accident, photos of the damaged plane appeared on the Internet, and Concorde lovers were deploring the level of care it had received during its postretirement odyssey in New York.

Bill White, the man responsible for maintenance of the 32-year-old jet, said he learned of the damage indirectly through the Concorde’s fan club. The plane is in Mr. White’s charge because he is the president of the foundation that operates the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. After British Airways retired its fleet of Concordes, the airline leased the jet to the museum, which displayed it on a barge in the Hudson River.

But when the Intrepid, the aircraft carrier that houses the museum, had to temporarily abandon its rotting pier on the West Side of Manhattan in late 2006, the Concorde had to go, too. British Airways considers the plane a three-dimensional billboard for its service, and it did not want the Concorde to stay with the Intrepid, which is docked at Staten Island and is closed while the West Side pier is being refurbished.

So Mr. White found a temporary home for the jet at Aviator Sports, a recreational complex at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. The Concorde, which had traveled by barge to Manhattan from Kennedy International Airport in 2004, retraced most of that voyage en route to Aviator Sports.

The jet’s stay there has been more turbulent than a trans-Atlantic crossing at Mach 2. Shortly after agreeing to rent the plane for $15,000 a month during the Intrepid’s absence, the original operators of Aviator Sports sold out. Their successors have balked at honoring the previous managers’ pledge to pay for the plane’s return to the Hudson waterfront, Mr. White said. The cost of that trip has been estimated at $250,000.

Mr. White said he was perturbed that the current operators of the complex did not notify him of the damage right away. He said he expected the cost of replacing the nose cone to be covered by Aviator Sports’s insurance policy.

He said he had been told that a driver “smacked the front end of the Concorde with his truck.” He added that Intrepid museum officials would “take steps with Aviator to secure the aircraft so that this kind of a ridiculous happening won’t happen again.”

Salvatore Musumeci, the director of security at the complex, said, “It was an unfortunate thing that happened, and everyone here is upset about it.” He said he did not know who would pay for the repairs.

John Lampl, a spokesman for British Airways, said the airline expected the jet to be fixed and returned to the Manhattan pier by the end of the year. Replacement parts for Concordes are no longer being manufactured, but Mr. Lampl said the airline knew of collectors who had bought spare nose cones at an auction. He said he expected that Intrepid officials could buy one from one of those enthusiasts.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Concorde Is Disfigured While Parked in Brooklyn. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe